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Wittlebee Co-Founder (And Former Myspace Exec) Sean Percival Joins Topix As VP Of Marketing
Aug 13, 1:01AM
Sean Percival, who was most recently co-founder and CEO of children's clothing subscription startup Wittlebee, has joined online discussion site Topix as vice president of marketing. Percival left Wittlebee earlier this year due to fundraising trouble, and he said he's taking a role at Topix that has been "vacant for a bit." His résumé includes a stint as vice president of online marketing at Myspace (back in the good old days where they still capitalized the "S"), and director of content/content manager at Tsavo Media, docstoc, and Mahalo.Watch Ashton Kutcher Blow Kids' Minds With Steve Jobs Quotes In "Smart Is Sexy" Speech
Aug 13, 12:31AM
"The sexiest thing in the entire world is being really smart. And being thoughtful. And being generous. Everything else is crap!" Ashton Kutcher passionately shouted advice at Nickelodeon viewers as he accepted a Teen Choice Award last night. Most spend award speeches thanking people yet Kutcher seemed hell-bent on enlightening kids with Steve Jobs' philosophy "Build a life. Don't live one!"How YouTube Network Big Frame Focuses On Big Stars With Four Vertical Brands
Aug 13, 12:15AM
Some YouTube networks focus on specific vertical interests -- like gaming at Machinima or food at Tastemade. And some try to add a technology layer to the business, like ZEFR or Fullscreen. But at Big Frame, it's all about the talent and nurturing four specific vertical segments, helping creators to collaborate and build their audiences together.>From The Founders of .Co, Pop.Co Is A Fast, Simple Way To Launch Businesses Online
Aug 13, 12:05AM
The company behind the .co domain has been working to associate .co websites with startups and innovation. Now its founders are trying to make it as easy as possible to start a business online with a new company called Pop.co. Basically, Pop.co is a bundle of online services that should remove any barrier between coming up with a cool idea and building a web presence around that idea. This approach is particularly important in a future where entrepreneurs run "three or four micro-businesses at a time, easy come, easy go, and you don't have to keep the domain forever," said CTO Tom Lackner — he suggested you should even be able to set all this up from your smartphone.The Mobile Tipping Point And Why Yahoo Must Mimic Groupon And Facebook
Aug 13, 12:04AM
When Facebook announced in its second-quarter earnings report that 41 percent of its advertising revenue was generated by mobile usage, it was a watershed moment: The social company proved that it could monetize its increasingly on-the-go user base. Key to the 41 percent figure is that it was up 11 percent as a percentage of total revenue in a single quarter; the first quarter’s mobile share percentage was a now-modest 30 percent. The figure is important for Facebook as it indicates that as smartphones and tablets take increasing stature over the desktop Internet, Facebook as a business won’t be left behind. That shift threw Zynga into a downward spiral, for example. I ran the math and, given past average growth rates, Facebook could generate more advertising income on mobile than desktop inside of 2013. But growth could, of course, slow. There is a shift worth noting that is emerging in technology companies — born in the age of the desktop web — that are working to harness mobile usage to generate revenue: Reaching the tipping point of bringing in half their top line or more in mobile-derived incomes. To say that you are a “mobile-first” company is all well and good, but you become one when your dollar flow is more mobile than not. Facebook, presuming another banner quarter, could cross that line soon in terms of its advertising revenues, but let’s not split hairs. Who else is edging close? Two firms that are form something of a cadre with Facebook: Groupon and Yelp. Facebook went public in mid 2012, Yelp in early 2012, and Groupon in late 2011. The companies are essentially IPO siblings. That fact gives us journalistic license to write a trend piece. You are welcome. Mobile Dollars Facebook brings in 41 percent of its ad dollars from mobile users. Yelp generates 40 percent of its advertising revenue from mobile usage. Groupon, it was revealed during a recent earnings call, derives almost half of its revenue from mobile usage. The Groupon number is the largest, and the broadest, encompassing all revenue, not merely advertising top line, making it the most interesting. As a public company, Groupon has been on a tear in the past few months. Since it fired its founder and CEO Andrew Mason, its stock has risen some 130 percent. Since March. Some of that increase is certainly due to the executive shakeup, but its second-quarter earnings contain a separate narrative.CloudZync, (Yet) Another M-Payments Startup, Launches In London With 280 Retailers Willing To Give Its Wallet App A Go
Aug 12, 11:47PM
U.K. startup CloudZync, founded in June last year, has just launched a wallet app called Zync Wallet (on iOS and Windows Phone, with an Android app due later this year) that seeks to combine preloaded mobile payments with in-app loyalty schemes and a messaging space for customers and merchants to share info with each other.Anthony Weiner Has No Idea Why He Didn't Use Snapchat Either
Aug 12, 11:36PM
Today during a BuzzFeed Brews session with Ben Smith, New York mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner was asked why he didn’t use Snapchat during his infamous sexting campaign with half the single women of the United States. His answer will rest immortal: “I don’t have a good answer to that.” It isn't clear whether Weiner is simply unaware of what Snapchat is, or whether he feels foolish that we have all seen so much of his genitalia, and that it could have been avoided with a simple app download. Then again, Carlos Danger ain’t afraid of no digital paper trail. And where’s the fun in knowing you won’t get caught, right? Unless Snapchat doesn’t, you know, delete all that shit. As soon as we have the clip, we’ll post it here. (Alexia has some sort of conflict of interest with this post that I don’t care about.) Top Image Credit: Max Talbot-MinkinStantt Uses Body-Scan Data To Create A Shirt For Every Body Type
Aug 12, 10:50PM
Clothing brands have begun using body-scan data to tweak their clothing sizes and to help customers find the right fit. But a new Kickstarter campaign is taking this method further by creating sizes from the ground up. With 50 different sizes modeled after body scans, Stantt wants to provide a quick and cheap alternative to custom-tailored clothing.Windows Azure Adds New Features, Including SQL Server Support General Availability And New Push Features
Aug 12, 10:43PM
Microsoft introduced a laundry list of new features today for Windows Azure, including general availability of SQL Server AlwaysOn support, notification hubs and autoscale improvements.In Wake Of Teen Suicides, Ask.fm Faces A "Myspace" Problem
Aug 12, 10:16PM
The teenage brain is not fully developed, say scientists. This is relevant in a discussion about building companies that target young adults, especially if those sites are social media outlets where users are allowed to participate anonymously, share positive and negative feelings, react to posts made by others, and otherwise quickly publicize any idle thought that comes to mind.Facebook Acquires "Mobile Technologies", Developer Of Speech Translation App Jibbigo
Aug 12, 9:22PM
Facebook's latest acquisition could help it connect users across language barriers. It has just announced that it's acquired the team and technology of Pittsburgh's Mobile Technologies, a speech recognition and machine translation startup that developed the app Jibbigo. From voice search to translated News Feed posts, Facebook could to a lot with this technology.Google Drive Now Lets You Spellcheck Entire Documents At Once, Adds Customizable Lists
Aug 12, 9:01PM
We haven’t seen any groundbreaking updates to Google Drive’s productivity tools lately, but the company continues to regularly make small improvements to them. Today, it’s adding a new spell check mode and more customizable numbered and bulleted lists for those “who love structure.” The new spellcheck mode will look familiar to those who grew up in the age before real-time spell check became the standard (or who still use this mode in Word, for example). With it, you can check the spelling of the entire document or presentation at once. To get started, just head for “tools” and then select “spelling.” A small window will pop up on the side of the screen and you can change or ignore all those unfortunate typos in your document. As for the new customizable bulleted lists, Google says you can now “change the color, size, and style of individual bullets, or even customize your own — whatever you prefer!” The most useful feature here is probably the ability to change individual bullets so you can mark certain items as done, for example. Just last week, Google drive added an improved link tool to its feature set and it also recently improved its sharing settings.Elon Musk's Hyperloop Explained: A Technically Possible Sci-Fi Dream He's Too Busy To Work On Right Now
Aug 12, 8:46PM
Extravagant entrepreneur know for his futurey projects has explained his Hyperloop project in detail to Businessweek's Ashlee Vance ahead of publishing his blog post and holding his press conference today, and the resulting project is an ambitious project that borders on the crazy. This is the guy who build Tesla Motors and SpaceX, but he actually says he regrets bringing it up to begin with and says it's up to someone else to build it.Week One With The Misfit Shine - A Hands-On Review From Someone Who Hates Most Activity Trackers
Aug 12, 8:36PM
Fitness is a very personal thing, so when it comes to the ever-expanding market of activity tracking gadgets, it always helps to hear what exactly different people love or hate about a given device when trying to assess if it's the right one for you. It's kind of like why Yelp is good for restaurant reviews -- it helps to get details from lots of different people when coming to your own conclusions. So when I kept hearing Felicia Williams, my coworker here who heads up the programming for TechCrunch TV, talk about her brand new Misfit Shine device, I dragged her in front of the camera to discuss it in-depth and provide us with another perspective on what the experience is like.Google's Bug Bounty Program Has Now Paid Out Over $2M, Increases Some Chromium Rewards To $5K
Aug 12, 8:31PM
Google's bug bounty program, the company today announced, has now paid out more than $2 million to security researchers. Since the program launched three years ago, the company rewarded researchers for reporting more than 2,000 security bugs in Chromium and its web apps. About $1 million of this prize money went to researchers who reported Chromium-related issues and the other million to researchers who looked into its web apps.Hackermeter Wants To Kill Your Résumé And Replace It With A High Score
Aug 12, 8:30PM
If you’re looking to hire a bad-ass programmer, fielding résumés can start to feel like an exercise in futility. They’re good for quickly filtering out folks who are clearly applying to everything — but when everyone in the industry has some crazy made-up senior ninja/rockstar/space cadet title, when everyone considers themselves a coder, and when “Proficient with C” can mean two entirely different things based on a person’s ego, that’s about all they’re good for. Hackermeter, part of the most recent Y Combinator class, thinks they have a better alternative: a coder score. Hackermeter is based around the concept of coding challenges. The better you perform on each challenge, the higher your score. The higher your score, the more enticing you’ll be to a potential employer. When you first sign up for Hackermeter, you’re given the choice: developer or employer? As a developer, Hackermeter initially presents itself as a set of around a dozen challenges for you to pick from. On one end, you’ve got your basics: can you make a fibonacci sequence generator? Can you determine if a string is a palindrome? On the other end, you’ve got the tougher stuff: can you recursively parse a chunk of JSON to look for a very specific type of data structure? Can you test for limitations in a lightweight cryptography model? Each challenge can be completed in one of five languages: Ruby, Python, Java, C++, or C. You type and test your code right in the browser (more on that in a second), submitting it once you feel it’s up to snuff. Once you’ve submitted a code sample that successfully tackles the challenge at hand, it goes in your portfolio, and your score changes accordingly. As an employer, you’re able to search through the coders in Hackermeter’s database, with Hackermeter attempting to automatically pair you with developers best suited for a job. Looking for a hard-core Python expert? Filter your search to those who’ve completed the harder challenges using Python. Want an entry-level Rubyist? Disable the difficulty filter, flip on the Ruby filter, and you’ve got your list. Once you’ve found a few coders who fit the bill, you can send them messages — or, if you’re still not quite sure about their coding talents, send them a “screening.” Screenings are sets of custom-built, rapid-fire coding challenges built by each employer. You can use Hackermeter’s pre-provided challenges, or build your own.Sony's Crazy Plan To Improve Mobile Photos Involves Making Attachable Cameras For Phones
Aug 12, 8:15PM
While Samsung and Nokia (and everyone else really) are locked in a sort of mobile photography war by baking elaborate cameras into new smartphones, Sony is apparently testing a slightly different approach. Rather than cramming a high-end camera into a phone, the folks at SonyAlphaRumors have happened upon a set of photos that depict a pair of Sony "lens cameras" that latch onto your smartphone instead.Last Chance To Sign Up For Hardware Alley At Disrupt SF
Aug 12, 8:00PM
Every year I’m given the best job a guy could ever want: planning hardware alley, a one day extravaganza of some of the best hardware I’ve ever seen. This event, which happens on the last day of Disrupt, is a crowd favorite and I’d love to feature your gear. What is Hardware Alley? It’s a celebration of hardware startups (and other cool gear makers) that features everything from robotic drones to 3D printers. We try to bring in an eclectic mix of amazing exhibitors and I think you’ll agree that our previous Alleys have been roaring successes. We’d like you to register as a Hardware Alley exhibitor. You’ll get to exhibit on the last day of Disrupt SF, Sept 11, to show off your goods and get access to some of the most interesting people (and most interesting VCs) in the world. We’d love to have you. All you need to demo is a laptop. TechCrunch provides you with: 30″ round cocktail table, linens, table top sign, inclusion in program agenda and website, exhibitor WiFi, and press list. To find out more please visit our pavilion page. You can reserve your spot by purchasing a Hardware Alley Exhibitor Package. If you can’t attend Disrupt but would like to demo on the final day use promo code: H@rdwareSF13-1day. If you are Kickstarting your project now or bootstrapping, please contact me at john@techcrunch.com with the subject line “HARDWARE ALLEY.” I will do my best to accommodate you. Hope to see you in SF!Google Glass Update Adds Video Player, Voice Actions For Path And Evernote, And New Cards
Aug 12, 7:52PM
Google has added some new features to Glass in the latest software update for its experimental face-based computing device. There's a new video player with simple tap to start/pause, swipe to fast forward and rewind commands, and new voice commands for posting an update or taking a note that uses Path or Evernote glassware by default if you have them installed.Drew Houston: YC Grad, Dropbox Co-Founder, And Now Disrupt Speaker
Aug 12, 7:26PM
Drew Houston is one of the few founders in the technology world who has been able to masterfully navigate the journey from being an MIT hacker to the CEO of a multi-billion-dollar company. Houston and his team have been able to turn file sharing company Dropbox into a platform used by over 150 million people across the globe in just six years. Which is why we are incredibly excited to announce that Houston will be joining us for an on stage interview at Disrupt SF.If at any time you'd like to stop receiving these messages, just send an email to feeds_feedburner_com_techcrunch+unsubscribe-hmdtechnology=gmail.com@mail.feed2email.net.
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